news-manifold – Page 2 – Manifold Recording / The Miraverse

Pioneering the Electric Highway

For the past several months, Thia Konig has been treating us to a wonderful journal of her photography titled Pioneering the Electric Highway. It documents her adventures with Ben Woodard as they go where no electric vehicles have gone before. And in so doing, they became pioneers of the electric highway–at least on the West Coast. This “road trip of a lifetime” (as Thia described it) called for a spirit of adventure, a willingness to venture into the unknown. And what made it work was their winning ways of finding power in the community, literally.

According to the US Department of Energy, there are just over 6,200 electric vehicle charging stations in the US today. Using their handy-dandy locator, I found there are 3 within a 15 mile radius of Manifold Recording, including one less than 3 miles away, at Central Carolina Community College. But if you were in Bandera, Texas (just outside San Antonio) and wanted to drive to Socorro (just outside of El Paso), there are presently zero stations along that 501 mile route. That’s an adventure! And the only way to do it is to make friends along the way. Thia and Ben’s journey was like that…The Love Bug meets the 21st Century.

Inspired by their pioneering drive, we have decided to make Manifold Recording a friendly place for clients with electric vehicles. First, we installed several 20A circuits of 120V shore power convenient to our parking areas. Though these only deliver enough current to charge at a rate of 4-5 miles per hour, that adds 30-50 miles of range during a typical 8-10 hour session, more than enough to get home at the end of the day. But we wanted to do more, so we installed a weatherproof NEMA 14-50 outlet in front of the garage. Charging 6x faster than using a typical household circuit, it can top off a Tesla with 30 miles of charge during a one hour business meeting. It can deliver 60 miles of charge during a two hour film screening and review. That’s friendly!

It’s also climate-friendly: every electron delivered via these outlets is fully offset by electrons generated by our 92kWh Solar Double-Cropping system.

So if you have a high-end music, video or film project to do, and a spirit of adventure, bring them to Manifold Recording and let’s work together!

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Trying new things

GaryHusband — Gary Husband rehearsing at Manifold Recording

This week we have been given a gift. Two of the most talented members of the Jazz fusion community are making a record at Manifold Recording. And they are trying something new: the co-production model of The Miraverse. If you are within 40 miles of Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, or Pittsboro, you might want to consider becoming a co-producer on Friday, or at least having dinner with these artists and hearing what Alex Machacek and Gary Husband have been creating.

A lot has changed in the recording industry since John McLaughlin started recording with Miles Davis, but a few things have stayed the same: the laws of physics that govern acoustics have not changed, and the challenge of making a great record–from the technical practice to the acoustics to the critical decisions during tracking and mixing–remain challenges no matter how much technology one has available. The co-production model is a new approach geared toward helping artists produce their art at the highest level, using both the most advanced technologies available and the most organic acoustic spaces in which to give their music life, and to do so in an economically sustainable way.

One major task of making a great recording is the recording process itself. This process has its own magic, its own mystery, its own moments of enlightenment to offer. And it is a process that is usually hidden from view, inaccessible to all except those directly connected to the process. But what about those who love not only the music itself, but the process of producing the music? In the world of local food, chefs are teaming up with farmers, bringing the restaurant to the field so that diners can experience food in a more complete and holistic way that just what is served on the plate. Other artists are inviting people into their studios to witness the process of creation. Why not do the same for the recording arts?

We are thrilled that Gary and Alex are trying new things. And we hope that you might try something new as well and support the work of these artists in a new way. It is quite something special to hear our 9′ concert grand piano in the Music Room. It will be quite something special to hear Alex playing through our locally-made Carr amplifiers. And if you decide to make a day of it and spend time not only hearing them play live, but participating in the recording process.

Leonardo DaVinci once said “Art lives from constraints and dies from freedom.” Which means that art is defined by the choices made by the artist. By seeing those choices being made, by understanding how those choices can be discerned in a recording, you might just find that you have a whole new appreciation for your existing library of recordings as you hear nuances (choices!) you’d never heard before.

Tickets for those who wish to attend are being handled by AbstractLogix here.

BREAKING NEWS: There is now an option to join only the post-dinner concert. Contact AbstractLogix to check on availability of these $99 tickets. We hope to see you Friday, either for the whole day, for dinner, or for the wrap-up performance. Thank you for helping these artists produce the next milestones in Jazz recording.

Celebrating the Home Town Hero

We live in a paradoxical age: believe nothing unless you have seen it, yet trust outside experts more than the leaders of one’s own community. All my life I have heard the quote “nobody is a hero in their home town” only to discover it’s a paraphrase of a verse from the Gospel of Luke, where Jesus says “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in their own hometown.” Doubtless Plato complained about the same problem hundreds of years earlier. I believe this is due to our tendency to confuse the familiar with the ordinary. Since moving to Chapel Hill and becoming familiar with many of the great people in the region, I have come to appreciate just how extraordinary so many of them are. Including those with a musical inclination.

That is not to say that we don’t appreciate talent from other states or countries. As a board member of Carolina Performing Arts, I’m rightfully proud of the world-class roster of international talents that perform at Memorial Hall each academic year. But the greatness that comes from afar does not preclude the possibility of greatness living amongst us as well. The INDY week article is a great case in point. Yes, it may seem like bragging to use my own studio as an example of a world-class music and post-production facility in our community, but it’s true. Equally true, and perhaps more important because of the network effect, is that the local community is able to come together and celebrate that fact. Today, artists both local and global are willing to give us the nod over more established facilities in Nashville, New York, Los Angeles, and even London, which is now leading to greater opportunities for all in our growing community. That is wonderful!

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“Dear Governor Cuomo” wins at Wild and Scenic® Film Festival

We are so happy that the film “Dear Governor Cuomo” won the top prize for its treatment of climate change at the Wild and Scenic® Film Festival, we put out a press release:

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A global audience

UPDATED 5/15/2013 — We have been visited by Greenland!

WordPress has a new stats widget which tells me not only how many visitors are coming to the website on a daily basis, and what they are reading, but also where they are coming from. This is a relatively new feature, and one which as yet does not allow me to automatically share these interesting statistics. But I have been reading them with increasing interest, not least because I am not used to seeing flags from so many countries. Here’s a list of the flags and hits we have received on a per-country basis in less than 18 months:

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More than a coincidence: Frederic Chiu records at Manifold Recording

When an artist makes a recording at a studio, there is always a coincidence–two things happening at the same time and place. One is the interpretation and the performance of the artist, the other is the creative capture of that ephemeral performance so that it can be replicated and experienced across time and space, perhaps by people not yet even alive when the recording was made. But the coincidences we shared with pianist Frederic Chiu this past week went far beyond that.

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In the studio with Jimmy Herring…

This is just a very brief posting to share some photos of Jimmy Herring’s visit to Manifold Recording and his performance at The Miraverse. Here’s Jimmy pulling some great sounds out of his Telecaster:

Some fast fingerwork on his favorite new toy:

Jimmy listening to tracks of the session in the Control Room:

Before you know it, all the band’s gear is loaded into the garage…

…and onto the bus, headed for Colorado in the morning.

More soon!

Speech text from Miraverse Power & Light Solar Double-Cropping Ribbon-cutting

North Carolina is a great place to grow. Our family moved here when the growing company I started in Silicon Valley back in 1989 was bought by a faster-growing company here in North Carolina, Red Hat. North Carolina is home to a great community of innovators, and today we are proud to stand with many of them as we unveil what has truly been a community effort.

When I read The Omnivore’s Dilemma in 2006, I realized that the question “what should we eat for dinner?” had life-changing implications. We are what we eat. But as a society, we also decide what we grow, how we grow it, how it comes to market, and at what price. In 1903, commercial seed houses offered 288 varieties of beets; by 1983 the choice is down to 17. From 544 types of cabbage, we’re down to 28. From 307 types of sweet corn, we’re down to 12. Our dinner-time choices are a function of many choices made before we were even born. The Omnivore’s Dilemma teaches that when the question “what can we do?” becomes too limiting, the question of what should we do becomes all the more urgent. And not just when it comes to food.

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Speech text from the grand opening of Manifold Recording and The Miraverse

He set his mind to work on unknown arts and thereby changes the laws of nature – Ovid, Metamorphoses

Welcome, and thank you for coming to the grand opening of Manifold Recording and The Miraverse! Some years ago Amy posted a little quote on my side of the mirror we share in our bathroom that reads “There will come a time when you believe everything is finished; that will be the beginning.” After five years of planning and construction, we have realized a dream, a dream that is now so real you can see it, you can touch it, you can enter it. You are welcome to do so-once we cut the ribbon.

Today we want to share with you an even bigger dream, the one that begins today. This dream cannot be built with concrete and steel, but it can be realized the old-fashioned way: with magic.

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TEC Award Nomination for Outstanding Creative Achievement

“Manifold must be one of the finest music-dedicated studios built in the world in the last decade. ” — Alex Oana, Manifold Recording: Inside the Miraverse

Manifold Recording is honored to have been nominated for a TEC Award for Outstanding Creative Achievement in the Studio Design Project category. We congratulate and thank Wes Lachot Design, and especially Wes Lachot, who succeeded brilliantly in helping to realize this ambitious project. If a picture is worth a thousand words, and then the 10,000 pictures I have taken of this project during its four years of construction suggest just how much could be said about what he conceived, drew, detailed, and then argued for in its implementation. But there is much more to this creative achievement than meets the eye, or the ear for that matter.

“we wanted to reboot the music industry by reinventing the role of the recording studio”

When I first sat down with Wes, he asked the question that every studio designer must ask: what do you want to do? I told him that we wanted to reboot the music industry by reinventing the role of the recording studio. We agreed that we would need to honor the laws of physics (especially acoustics), but in all other ways we would seek to be the change we wanted to see in the world. We would be a model for acoustic and technological excellence, but we would also be a model of transparency and collaboration. We would be an ideal environment for musical performance, but we would also be a model for entrepreneurial innovation and economic sustainability. We would honor the great teachings of organic architecture and sacred geometry by becoming the best example of those teachings we could be. All of this was discussed before Wes put pencil to paper and began drawing the lines that ultimately became footings, walls, structures, buildings, and operating commercial facilities. In accepting this commission, Wes accepted the whole of the project, and he delivered brilliantly, even when certain aspects seemed to be in irreconcilable conflict. Such is the nature of an outstanding creative achievement.

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